Education

Consultants chosen to study MPS

Firm includes then-British leader's education adviser

Sir Michael Barber, formerly the top education adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the international consulting firm Barber works for could be important players in setting the course of Milwaukee Public Schools.

The firm, McKinsey & Co., has been chosen to conduct the financial review of MPS that Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett want done before they decide where they stand on how the school district is run and funded.

Ten Milwaukee foundations are putting up the money to hire McKinsey, said Mary Burke, a former commerce secretary in the Doyle administration who is the volunteer project manager for the analysis.

The firm operates throughout the world, doing a wide range of management consulting work. Education has been one of its interests.

Doyle and Barrett jointly called for the analysis after events in recent months raised major questions about the current and future financial situation of MPS.

They also sought the study amid pressures from some business and political leaders to make basic changes in the way MPS is run, in hopes of getting better results in student achievement.

Doyle has said he wants the McKinsey recommendations before he unveils his plans, probably in early February, for the state budget. Burke said the firm already was at work and hopes to meet that deadline.

Barrett said Monday that he agreed with Doyle's emphasis on the state budget. "The best lever we have to effectuate change is through his budget," Barrett said.

Doyle said last week in a meeting with Journal Sentinel editors and reporters that despite the serious budget problems facing the state, he intended to make recommendations related to MPS because of the importance of having a strong public education system in Milwaukee.

Some of the possible changes might not involve extra costs, Doyle said. He gave as an example the record of grants from a state fund for high-cost special education students. The Madison district received more than $1.4 million from that fund last year, compared with $40,182 for MPS. Doyle said that disparity needed to be addressed.

Shaping project

Barrett said he was eager to have the McKinsey consultants involved.

"I want a good analysis of both the spending priorities and the revenue sources and needs for the Milwaukee Public Schools, to allow us to get then to the educational issues," he said.

MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said he hoped the McKinsey report would lead Doyle to recommend changes in the state school funding formula that would help MPS remain funded adequately without large property tax increases.

Burke said Barber has worked on shaping the Milwaukee project, although most of the McKinsey staffers involved are from the firm's Chicago office.

Barber has worked for McKinsey since September 2005 and has been involved with consulting work in several major schools systems in the United States. The New York Times reported in 2007 that Barber had advised the Ohio Board of Education and the chancellor of New York City schools, Joel Klein.

Barber and McKinsey are involved in consulting work involving public schools in New Orleans.

Barber was education adviser to Blair from 1997 to 2001 and held the title of "chief adviser on delivery" in the Blair government from 2001 to 2005, according to his biography on the McKinsey Web site. The latter post put him in charge of implementing Blair's programs in health, education, transportation, immigration and other major subjects.

Lessons in U.S.

In a 2006 interview with Education Sector, an education research organization, Barber was asked what lessons he had learned from his experience about how to intervene with American school districts with low-performing schools.

"One is you have to be clear when you intervene what you are attacking," he said. "If you intervene in a school district that is badly managed, then you don't want to make it a generalized attack on every teacher and every community."

Barber co-authored a report that McKinsey issued in September 2007, "How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top."

The report concluded, "Three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child."

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is acting as the "fiscal agent" organizing the McKinsey work, which means the consultant's report is not being done for a government agency.

The Helen Bader Foundation made the lead gift to support the project: $350,000. The others involved are the Northwestern Mutual, M&I, Bradley, Betty Brinn, Argosy, Herzfeld, Weiss Family and Zilber foundations.